Band: Dreamshade
Title: What Silence Hides
Label: Spinefarm Records
Distribution: Suburban
Release date: January 27th 2011
Review: CD

Dreamshade are a Swiss formation, formed in 2006 in Lugano, and now debuting via one of Finland’s hugest Metal labels, Spinefarm, two years and a half after the self-financed EP To The Edge Of Reality. That mini-release, by the way, gained excellent responses all over Europe, and it brought the band on different well-known festival roosters: Metal Camp, Summer Breeze, Metalfest etc.
What Silence Hides, the first full length, was recorded at Cave Studio in their home country, by Etan Genini (of BlackAce-fame), it was mixed by Fredrik Nordström at his Fredman Studio (Samael, Old Man’s Child, Devian, Dimmu Borgir, Leng Tch’e and many more), and mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound (Tenebrarum, Metallica, Therion, Enslaved, Sepultura etc). The album lasts for forty five minutes and consists of ten titles.
What strikes me most is the ‘Scandinavian’ approach. Both sound (the mix was done in Sweden) and song writing are strongly comparable to, especially, the Finnish scene, as well as the Swedish one. Aggression and melody go hand in hand, the screaming grunts, the atmospheric, sometimes slightly electronized keyboard lines, the guitar-driven song structures, the changes in tempo etc, it does sound Finnish or Swedish, doesn’t it?
Imagine Soilwork, Dark Tranquillity or mid-nineties In Flames (Sweden), or Catamenia / Children Of Bodom / Noumena / Norther, covered within an Alpine breeze, and What Silence Hides is the result…

55/100

Ivan Tibos.